The Life Story of an Old Rebel

suggestion of friends. I suppose a man of 76 may be called "old," although I

there were no rebels against wrong-doing, wrong-doing would prosper. To an Irishman, who is a fighter by temperament, and a fighter by choice against those in high places, life is sure to provide plenty of excitement; and that, no doubt,

hen our family returned to Ireland, that I and a younger brother were born there. My father was engaged for about three years as clerk of the works for the erection of a castle for Sir Francis Macnaghten, near Bushmills, County Antrim. This must be one of the least Catholic parts of Ire

rpool, which has a more compact and politically importan

born on "the old sod" itself. No part of our race has shown more determination and enthusiasm in the cause of Irish nationality. As a rule the Irish of Great Britain have been well organised, and, during the l

few, if any, living Irishmen who have had such experience, from actual personal contact with them, as I have had of our people in every part of Great Britai

ey sometimes took a week in crossing. The steamers which superseded them, though an immense improvement as

o land our people from all parts. Since the Railway Company diverted a good deal of the Irish traffi

from "the old sod." This was placed high upon the wall of a public house kept by a retired Irish pugilist, Jack Langan. In the thirties and forties of the last century, up to 1846, when he died, leaving ov

ion. Lumber Street chapel was not, however, the first of our places of worship built during the Penal days, for the Jesuits had a small chapel not far off, erected early in the eighteenth century, but destroyed by a No-Popery mob in 1746. St. Mary's, Lumber Street, too, was originally

t a few weeks in one of these Catholic districts. My employer had an alteration to make in the house of a gentleman at Lydiate, near Ormskir

ofed, was the most perfect ecclesiastical ruin in Catholic hands in South Lancashire. During the time I was at Lydiate there came a Holiday of Obligation, when I heard Mass in the house of a Catholic farmer

nsidered one of the best in the diocese. The choirmaster and organist, John Richardson, was a distinguished composer of Catholic church music, and held in such high esteem that, for any important celebration, he could always secure the services of the chief members

nerally invited. In this way I was delighted to go to the opening of the new church at Lydiate, so that I was taking part in the third stage of the Catholic history of the diocese-having sa

ys to call the older Catholic places of worship rather after the names of the streets in which they were situated than of the saint to whom they were dedicated. During the Famine years the bishops and clergy must have found it extremely difficult to provide for the tremendous influx of our people. I have seen them crow

noble-hearted, hard-handed toilers who have contributed to such work, and greater glory still to the humble men who, after a hard week's work in a ship's hold at the docks, or perhaps in the "jigger loft" of a warehouse eight stories high, turn ou

e part of the country as themselves to give them a helping hand, for it is a fine trait in the Irish character-and "over here in England" the trait has not been lost-that, however poor, they are always ready to befriend what seems to them a still poorer neighbour. Those who have lived here some time are glad to see someone from their "own place," and, amid the squalor of an English city, the imaginative Celt-as he listens to the gossip about the changes, the marriages, and the deaths that have taken place since he left "home "-for a brief moment lives once more upon "the old sod,

al scale, but it is only too often the case that adverse circumstances compel the great bulk of them to have reco

ber of grown-up people sitting on the doorsteps of their wretched habitations. John Barry once told me that a friend of his asked one of these how they

nto the higher circles of the commercial world, so that I have seen among the merchant princes "on 'Change

or many years humbly did the laborious work on which the huge commerce of the port rested. But, perhaps, in years to come Liverpool